


Competition

by swagikins



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman (Movies - Nolan), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Crane and Harley are platonic, F/M, One-upping, The summary probably makes this seem like something COMPLETELY DIFFERENT THAN IT IS, but you kind of can, harley is already a little loopy but you can't tell, or really it's a love-hate thing, they're forced to talk to each other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-02
Updated: 2017-03-02
Packaged: 2018-09-27 22:25:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10054229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swagikins/pseuds/swagikins
Summary: Jonathan Crane, head of Arkham Asylum, and Harleen Quinzel, a new doctor straight out of the intern batch, squabble like brother and sister.The question is: who would be the better sibling?





	

**Author's Note:**

> For reference, Cillian Murphy's Scarecrow is here, and for Harleen, I imagined Deborah Ann Woll (as her from Daredevil; Karen Page is my wife). And you can KIND OF tell the Joker's already getting to her but kind of not at the same time?
> 
> Also, if you need to wonder where this take place, probably the end of The Dark Knight, but Jonathan hasn't been doused in his own gas yet and still has a decent amount of sanity.
> 
> I'll go over and edit this at a later time. Enjoy.

"Good afternoon, Dr. Crane." 

Harleen Quinzel approached the head of Arkham Asylum with a warm smile, radiating her iconic charm and comforting personality. She held a cup of coffee in one hand, and files clipped to a clipboard in the other, and appeared to be going somewhere; obviously not, as she took a moment to speak to Jonathan Crane in the middle of the hallway.

"Salutations, Dr. Quinzel. How is your day so far?" Jonathan said politely, forcing a smile and pausing to glanced at her with a tilt of his head. He clasped his hands behind his back, and crossed his ankles while leaning against the wall, anticipating that this might be a longer conversation than he had hoped.

"Good, good, thank you for asking. How are your patients today? I bet they weren't as nasty as mine." Harleen said with a wiggle of her eyebrows, and laughed softly afterwards. 

"Well, it depends on what time of day it is."

She and Jonathan had a...what some would call, a game. It was a game, whereas, one would speak of their current cases of the day with a bold confidence, and then compared them to the others' cases. They tried to outwit each other with the severity of their patients, and try and one-up each other to the best of their ability. It was a competition, she would call it, and it was just child's play, he would retort; but now, he didn't have no other choice but to participate in the little charade.

"Oh really?" Harleen murmured, and tapping her chin for a second with narrowed eyes. "Well, Jack almost threw a lamp at my head during his session." She said confidently. Jack was the arsonist she had with homicidal tendencies. He was aggressive, and on some occasions, tried to act on those aggressions. 

"And Annabelle did throw a lamp at my head; I just ducked." Dr. Crane retorted. "Chris Pines was recently filed into my schedule. He's a paranoid schizophrenic; likes to cause himself pain, injure himself, so 'the Others' would stay away." He crossed his arms, momentarily pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. "He cut a three-inch gash into his forearm; had to clean up his blood in the carpet."

"Trace Jackson cleaned up his OWN blood," Harleen said quickly, trying to win their little game. She stepped forward, and lightly poked Jonathan in the chest. "By licking it up. Makes you wish your office had tile flooring, doesn't it?" 

Crane raised an eyebrow, his icy blue eyes glinting with a hint of slight wonder. Of course, he knew Dr. Quinzel's office was a temporary one, as she was fairly new to the team of therapists at Arkham Asylum. It was a dimly lit classroom in the east wing, which used to be used for juvenile patients if they had been taken out of school. Now that the younger patients had been moved, many rooms were open. And of course, he didn't really mind the carpet flooring in his office. It was better insulation, in his opinion. "Blood stains aren't that hard to get out. But Chesney Chase, one of your first patients? She attempted to swing at my head with a fork during lunch." Jonathan said coolly. 

"Jack tried to swing at me with a butcher knife that the lunch lady left out by accident." Harleen retorted, scoffing with the slightest impression of a smirk on her lips. "Being a part of Arkham Asylum's working staff isn't so bad. I wonder what it's like to be head honcho of the whole gig?" She mused. She seemed oddly giddy today, Crane noticed. She looked like she was..trying more. 

Perhaps something exciting happened to her the previous morning? Maybe she met someone? Found a better job? Might leave this shithole? Jonathan didn't know. 

"It's quite tiring. Though, pays well and keeps me busy. Speaking of, I need to go fax some files to the DA-- what was his name? Harvey Dent?" Jonathan said calmly, and pointed down the right fork in the hallway. "If you'll excuse me, Dr. Quinzel..." 

Harleen Quinzel's smile slowly faded, and then dropped altogether. She seemed a little down that Crane had to go do something else, but nevertheless, she looked back up and forced a smile onto her face. "Alright, then. See you later, Dr. Crane." She walked off, and left Jonathan there to ponder on the odd behavior of Harleen. With a small shake of his head, he went and finished his business.

\---

The time was 8:42PM, four hours later, and Jonathan Crane was holed up in his office with files stacked to his neck on the corner of his oakwood desk. He was resting, a little unwinded, and had his feet kicked up onto the wood, ankles crossed. He was reading a book in his hand; but of course, he had already read the book before, as well as the overflowing bookshelf on the far right side of the room. 

As he was turning the page, getting into the interesting part of his book -- the section on the brain's emotional center -- there was a knock at his door. He wasn't expecting anyone, so with a look of slight confusion, he leaned forward and set down his book. "It's open..?" He said quietly, and bookmarked his page.

The door freaked open, and sort-of-not surprisingly, Dr. Quinzel poked her blonde head in. "Hello. Just wanted to tell you I'm heading out; I have the next few days off, so I was planning to spend them at home." She slipped into the compacted office, in all of her feminine glory; she held a shoulder back in one hand, putting it over her shoulder, and looked tired. But, as always, she had that warm smile on her face. 

"Hi, Dr. Quinzel. Thank you for telling me; I was going to head home soon as well, as I would have someone filling in for me while I'm absent. How were your remaining patients today?"

Harleen chuckled with a raise of her eyebrow. This time, she smirked, it ghosting across her lips as she leaned against a filing cabinet near the door. "Jack attempted to plead he was sane. Almost offed himself. You?"

"Well, for the most part, my group therapy session was quite eventful. Most patients did their own thing," Crane said smoothly, and clasped his hands on the desk in front of him. His glasses slipped down his nose a little, but he didn't have the energy to push them back up. "screaming, ranting about a Scarecrow, trying to get out through the barred windows." 

For a moment, Harleen seemed a little lost. She was probably thinking, Jonathan assumed, and waited for a response. A curl of her blonde hair fell over her eyes, before she looked back up, and had that smile on her face from earlier in the day. Her hand slid over the filing cabinet, and she rested an elbow against it with a hum. "Well, I got assigned a new case today. It's quite exciting."

At that, Jonathan's interest suddenly spiked. What? A new case for a fresh therapist right out of the intern batch? He never ordered that....Crane himself was one to assign cases to the circle of therapists at Arkham Asylum. If he didn't do it, then...who the fuck did?

Crane lifted his head a little, tilting his head off to the right and eyed the blonde warily. "Oh really? Which patient is it?" He asked, though with the underlying tone of his voice, Dr. Quinzel immediately knew that what he said wasn't a choice on whether to be answered or not.

"I--I looked through his file, and his name is unknown," She said softly, and shifted her weight to one foot. A sign of nervousness, Jonathan thought. It shows she's still unsure if she should actually have the case, shows she's a little weak; strange. "But he calls himself the Joker."

Oh.

Oh...

_Oh._

Jonathan's face dropped any emotion, from pure surprise or sheer confusion, he couldn't place it, but his eyes held an unreadable glint in his icy blue irises. He let his feet fall from their perch on his desk, and he swiveled a little in his office chair. "Oh..Well. Must be a new patient, I see?" 

He played dumb merely to give the girl her time to shine. It was odd, for her to be assigned a new case; he was the one who fulfilled those tasks. Whoever did it, the Joker must have had a hand to play at, and that wasn't good. He had targeted her, whether she knew much of him or nigh. What he targeted her for...he didn't know. And quite frankly, with the Joker's history, he didn't want to get involve to help the poor woman, or he feared that his own criminal records would be revealed. 

"Yeah! Exciting, isn't it?" Harleen said, and for a split second, Jonathan could see the flicker of admiration and longing for the Joker flit across Dr. Quinzel's face, and he wondered just how much pity he could carry for this woman.

\-----

**_tbc...?_ **


End file.
